Experiment and numerical analysis of multi-story coupled steel plate shear wall with weak-axis connections

Abstract

As an extension of the steel plate shear wall (SPSW), the coupled steel plate shear wall (CSPSW) usually needs to be placed around the perimeter forming a core tube to resist seismic lateral forces. Therefore, the beam-to- column web connection (i.e., the weak-axis connection) is often inevitable. To develop the benefits of the CSPSW and increase prefabricated flexibility, the cyclic behavior was detailed experimentally and numerically. A 1/3 scaled four-story CSPSW specimen with weak-axis connections was tested under cyclic loading. The test results show that the specimen exhibits a desirable failure sequence and has stable lateral resistance and energy dissipation capacity due to the contribution of coupling beams and weak-axis connections. Based on this test, multiscale model and strip model were developed for simplifying analysis. To balance the accuracy and calculation cost, we further proposed the solution strategy of submodel and substructure for the CSPSW, and examined the effect of coupling beam's length using this substructure strategy by software ABAQUS. The numerical results show that the CSPSW with weak-axis connections exhibits good out-of-plane stability in bottom columns and has excellent properties in energy dissipation and ductility. The proposed multiscale model and strip model as well as the substructure solution strategy are proved to be effective and feasible, which substantially promotes the efficiency of numerical analysis. Besides, the length ratio of coupling beams should better no greater than 1.5, and the length ratio of 0.8 would be the optimal to ensure that the structure can enjoy excellent stiffness, ductility, energy dissipation and material efficiency.